What Motivations Would the U.S. Have Had to Fake the Moon Landing?

One of America's greatest accomplishments was landing on the moon, so why would the government want to fake it? It is important to note that this conspiracy did not occur directly after Apollo landed on the moon, in fact, the theory was not first introduced until a few years later when the book, We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle by Bill Kaysing was published. According to the article "Moon Landing Conspiracy" (Gupta, Sourabh,) that book along with a FOX program about the United States faking the moon landing was the founding of the conspiracy theory. One of the possible motives that the article mentions is that America had a lot of pressure to fly a man into space because the Soviet Union was much farther ahead of us in the space race. There was no guarantee that we would fly a man to the moon, so faking the entire event would be much safer. There were also problems with the space program and President John F. Kennedy had promised to successfully land someone on the moon. The website also claims that NASA could have paid people to fake it with the thirty billion dollars it raised. There is also the claim that by faking the moon landing, the government was able to successfully deviate everyone's attention from the Vietnam War. Thinking about all of these motives, one could easily create a conspiracy theory. This website looks at the moon landing as a hoax. Along with the motives, it also gives "proof" that America faked the moon landing by describing some of the flaws in the photographs. For more information debunking this theory, go to Photos and Videos. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the article "Hollywood Goes to the Moon: The Greatest Hoax of Them All?" (Bowdley, David) discusses the moon landing from the perspective that we actually went. The article does agree with the article by Sourabh that two of America's greatest motivations for landing on the moon were the war and President Kennedy's speech. Some people believe that it was impossible for NASA to create the successful technology needed to fly to the moon within a ten year period. This article also contains the same information regarding the program that aired on FOX which started the conspiracy. It claims that the program provided little scientific evidence for the successful mission to the moon and that one could easily view it as a hoax. This article also provides information about the pictures and videos taken of the moon landing. Again, for more information visit the "Photos and Videos" Page.